press freedom - Reporters sans frontières

PAKISTAN - SOUTH WAZIRISTAN
Who killed Amir Nawab Khan and Allah Noor Wazir?
PRESS
FREEDOM
3 March 2005
The 7 February fatal shooting of two reporters in Wana (in the northwestern Tribal Area of South Waziristan) was claimed 10 days later by
an unknown group calling itself Sipah-e-Islam (Soldiers of Islam). In a
fax sent to The News, an English-language daily, the group said: “We
take responsibility for the murder of the two journalists in South
Waziristan last week (...) Some journalists were in the process of
working for Christians (...) They are used as tools in the negative
propaganda of the Christians against the Muslim mujahideen (...) As
well as killing two journalists, we mujahideen killed American spies.”
The communiqué was signed by Ahmed Farooqi, a name not known to
journalists who specialize in covering Pakistani jihadist groups. The
BBC correspondent Rahimullah Yousafzai in Peshawar, for example,
said he had never heard of Sipah-e-Islam and thought it would be very
hard to verify if it really existed.
The claim supported the position taken by senior officials, including the
federal interior minister, who said within hours of the attack that it was
an act of terrorism aimed at sabotaging the government’s efforts to
pacify the Tribal Areas. North West Frontier Province governor Syed
Iftikhar Hussain Shah, for his part, said the “miscreants could be
foreigners or nationals” and that the government would “eliminate”
them with the help of the tribal groups.
The authorities singled out Taliban warlord and Taliban commander
Abdullah Mehsud, who opposed any peace accord with the army and
who forcefully rejected any reconciliation with his former mentor,
Baitullah Mehsud and the Pakistani government. He was the ideal
suspect but he quickly denied any involvement in the shooting. In a 9
February phone call to the correspondents of the BBC World Service
and Daily Times in Peshawar, he said his group had nothing to do with
the killings: “The government committed this murder in order to accuse
me (...) What I do, I take responsibility for it immediately.” In the course
of the call, he threatened the BBC correspondent with reprisals if he did
not publish the entire interview.
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A shooting in the centre of Wana
Reporters Without Borders spoke to one of the 10 journalists who was
in the van that was targeted in the 7 February attack. He said: “We
were in the town of Wana near the public hospital at around 7:30 p.m.
when a white car overtook our van. Two men sitting one behind the
other opened fire on us with AK-47 assault rifles. The shooting took
place less than 60 metres from the tribal militia building. They didn’t
move to stop the attackers (...) Noor’s skull exploded while Nawab was
hit in the base of the neck. They fired around 60 rounds. Each of them
emptied his clip with the aim of killing. After they had finished their job,
they did not speed away. They left slowly.” This survivor added: “We
called for help. Students and members of the tribal militia ran over.
Reporters sans frontières défend les journalistes emprisonnés et la liberté de la presse
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called for help. Students and members of the tribal militia ran over.
They took one of the injured, AFP correspondent Anwar Shakir, to the
public hospital where he underwent an operation for a stomach
wound.”
The two fatal victims were Amir Nawab Khan, who was a cameraman
with the international TV news agency APTN and a reporter with the
Pakistani daily The Frontier Post, and Allah Noor Wazir, a reporter
with the privately-owned Pakistani television station Khyber TV, the
Lahore-based daily The Nation and the German news agency DPA.
They were killed at the heart of what a local journalist called Wana’s
“green zone,” in an allusion to the highly-protected central part of
Baghdad. A strategic town a few kilometres from the Afghan border,
Wana is the Pakistani army’s centre of operations in its campaign
against Taliban and Al-Qaeda groups. The shooting took place about
100 metres from the army’s regional headquarters, and opposite official
buildings protected by security forces.
The van carrying the journalists was not clearly marked as a press
vehicle. It had been provided by the Tribal Area administration so they
could attend the surrender of Baitullah Mehsud, one of the Taliban
commanders. But the authorities had not laid on any special protection
for the press. Still, a local source pointed out that, by providing them
with a vehicle, the authorities were helping the press for the first time
and that from March 2004 until then they had done nothing but hinder
the right to information.
Reporters Without Borders has learned that no suspect was stopped at
any of the military checkpoints around Wana although an alert was
quickly issued by the security forces. The authorities later said
paramilitaries combed the area in a search for the two killers but no
arrests were ever announced.
Within the Pakistani government there seem to be differences about
the presumed motive for the attack. While the military have loudly
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declared it to be a terrorist act, the civilian authorities said in a one of
their Daily Situation Report that it was linked to personal quarrels.
Fear takes hold in the Tribal Areas
The offensive by an international military coalition against the Taliban
regime in Kabul at the end of 2001 put the journalists in Pakistan’s
federally-administered Tribal Areas at the centre of the news. After
years of isolation and fight against the authoritarian attitudes of
Islamabad’s representatives and inter-tribal vendettas, around 100
professional journalists – most of them members of the Tribal Union of
Journalists (TUJ) – found themselves being recruited by the Pakistani
and international press.
Osama Bin Laden’s alleged presence in the Tribal Areas and the
Pakistani military offensive of March 2004 put these relatively
inexperienced journalists at the heart of international coverage of the
war against terrorism. Journalists in the Tribal Areas, many of them
now working for more than one news media, had to face new
obstacles. The Pakistani army imposed a strict news blackout that cut
South Waziristan off from the rest of the world for months. Thanks to its
military success, the military government at the end of 2004 began to
feel able to invite journalists to cover warlord surrender ceremonies or
visit areas recovered from Taliban groups.
The murder of Khan and Wazir,
members of the Ahmadzai
Wazir tribe who were known for
taking a leading role in the past
three years, has shaken this
community of brave and
seasoned journalists to the core.
Both had been detained or
otherwise prevented from
working several times since
March 2004. Wazir’s editor at
the Pashto-language K h y b e r
Television described him as
“very active and always ready to
use his initiative.” The video
footage shot by Khan was often used by APTN for its reports on the
Pakistani army’s offensive against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Their deaths has revived fear within the press community in the Tribal
Areas. Since March 2003, the journalists there have been used army
restrictions and threats from jihadist armed groups, but they have had
to face a new, violent and invisible threat since 7 February.
A journalist in Wana who works for a Pakistani newspaper and an
international radio station told Reporters Without Borders that he and
around 20 other Wana-based journalists adopted additional security
measures on 9 February. “We go home earlier and we limit our
movements in order to avoid these mysterious killers,” he said on
condition of anonymity. “It is hard to explain the feeling of fear in which
we live. We don’t open the door after nightfall. Many of us are thinking
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monde.
we live. We don’t open the door after nightfall. Many of us are thinking
of leaving Wana for Tank, Dera Ismail Khan or Peshawar.”
TUJ president Sailab Mehsud was categorical: “I fear that there will be
new attacks if the killers of Amir Nawab and Allah Noor get away with
it.”
Journalists under threat from the Taliban
Journalists in the Tribal Areas and Peshawar told Reporters Without
Borders that jihadists often harass them if they do not like their work or
the terms used in reports about them. “The warlords threaten me with
reprisals if I do not report everything they say,” the correspondent for a
national daily based in Peshawar said. “They do not understand how
the modern press operates. They want to be glorified and want us to
write long articles about them.”
The threats have continued as Taliban chiefs surrendered. A journalist
in Dera Ismail Khan (a district in south of Peshawar) said: “I wrote that
Baitullah signed the peace accord but the newspaper ran a headline
saying he had surrendered. Since then I’ve been scared because I
don’t know how they may react.” A journalist in Wana recently received
a visit from Taliban jihadist militants who were dissatisfied with his
articles. “Be careful next time,” they said.
On 8 February, the TUJ president appealed to Pakistani editors to try
to reduce the risks for them: “Please do not use the word surrender for
armed militants. Avoid words that will anger them.”
Who benefits from the murders?
The 7 February shooting followed a series of targeted murders which
observers blamed on the most radical jihadists. In an article headlined
“Psy warfare by Wana militants,” The Friday Times correspondent in
Peshawar, Iqbal Khattak, wrote: “While the military offensive has
smashed the strongholds of Al Qaeda (…) the militants (…) have
changed their retaliation strategy by targeting government employees
(…). The strategy seems to have had the desired effect on tribal elders,
journalists and government employees.” Was the attack on the
journalists part of a new stage in this policy of terror waged by
increasingly marginalised jihadist groups?
While a personal or tribal dispute cannot be entirely ruled out, most of
the Pakistanis questioned by Reporters Without Borders were
convinced that it was a premeditated and orchestrated attacked aimed
at intimidating the press.
No one has publicly accused the security forces, but the ease with
which the killers eluded the investigations of an army on a war footing
has raised questions.
For religious or security reasons, the militants often take journalists to
task for filming or photographing them. The US news agency,
Associated Press, reported on 8 February that the Taliban attending
Baitullah Mehsud’s surrender ceremony some 80 km from Wana
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Baitullah Mehsud’s surrender ceremony some 80 km from Wana
became irate about the use of cameras and video cameras by
journalists. But would this irritation have been sufficient to have led to
this kind of reprisal?
Promises to investigate
Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, the head of military operations in South
Waziristan, promised a TUJ delegation on 12 February that the killers
would be arrested. He also promised that 3,000 euros would be given
to the families of the slain reporters and said the army had undertaken
to support the press in the Tribal Areas.
Two days before that, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain told a delegation of
tribal chiefs and religious leaders from Wana that “the government is
analysing all the aspects of the murder of the journalists in order to
know if they were targeted because of their work, personal quarrels or
old enmities.”
As the two murdered journalists were TUJ members, the union has
gone to great pains to seek justice for them. Its president, Mehsud,
went to Islamabad and Peshawar to meet officials. “The killers will be
brought to justice,” he has repeatedly been promised.
Reporters Without Borders fully supports the grievances which the TUJ
has presented to the civilian and military authorities. The international
press freedom organization calls for a thorough investigation into this
attack, an investigation in which all possible motives are explored. It
must go beyond the mysterious claim of responsibility by an unknown
group.
Reporters sans frontières défend les journalistes emprisonnés et la liberté de la presse
dans le monde, c'est-à-dire le droit d'informer et d'être informé, conformément à l'article
19 de la Déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme. Reporters sans frontières compte
neuf sections nationales (Allemagne, Autriche, Belgique, Espagne, France, GrandeBretagne, Italie, Suède et Suisse), des représentations à Abidjan, Bangkok, Istanbul,
Montréal, Moscou, New York, Tokyo et Washington, et plus de cent correspondants dans le
monde.